Chapter 6

I wanted to portray Edward Latrell as the most dangerous kind of evil man; one who can justify any atrocity, as long as it’s committed in the service of his cause. (Sound familiar?) You don’t have to look very far at all to find examples of this brand of self-righteousness at work in the world. Its greatest danger, and its power, lies in its fundamentalism; there’s no reasoning with it. And when it meets another, opposing fundamentalist force, the only outcome can be something terrible.

The first and second amendments to the U.S. Constitution have been debated and deconstructed since they were written, and by far more preeminent thinkers than me. My premise in exploring them in this book is simple: the Framers knew how powerful these rights could be, for good or ill, and still they wove them into the fabric of this country, clearly and permanently, and placed them inalienably in the hands of the people. My premise is that they knew exactly what they were doing.

This book isn’t anti-militia, any more than it’s pro-right or pro-left. It’s certainly anti-terrorist, but as you’ll see as you proceed through the story (and through the book that will follow this one), the greater enemies reveal themselves only gradually. I don’t want to get ahead of myself, though.

On a lighter note, there’s a small error in the U.K. version of the book, Maximum Impact, in this chapter. At one point a certain handgun is referred to as a “revolver,” and a while later on the “flat” of the barrel is mentioned. Revolvers, of course, don’t have flat barrels. In the U.S. version of the book, Circumference of Darkness, the word revolver was changed to .45, as the weapon in question is actually a Glock G36. This was one of the very last mistakes that I caught, and the U.K. version was already in production.

1 Comment

  1. Dan
    ·

    Semiautos generally don’t have flat barrels either, save the blocky area around the chamber on Glock products. What has flat sides is the slide assembly which houses the barrel.

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